Some New York state senators and Assembly members have linked up with civil rights advocates and community groups. With the Legislature holding a hearing on criminal justice reform, they have announced their support for strengthening the governor’s “Executive Criminal Justice Reform Act of 2015” proposal in the 2015-2016 executive budget to require reporting on policing data.

The unit will reportedly be modeled after a similar division at the LAPD. There are already several agencies dedicated to investigating the NYPD’s use of force.

03/18/2015

BuzzFeed

The New York Police Department wants to create a unit to investigate incidents in which cops shoot civilians, the Staten Island Advance reported.
If the Force Investigation Division, as it’s being called, comes to fruition, it will be one of numerous agencies that has the authority to investigate a police-involved shooting.

Dozens of advocates were joined by black and Latino lawmakers for a rally outside the Senate chambers in the Capitol on Tuesday, asking Governor Andrew Cuomo to appoint a special prosecutor when a civilian dies during police interaction.
Iris Baez, mother of Anthony Baez, who died in 1994 after an apparent chokehold during a police encounter, urged Cuomo to sign an executive order to appoint a special prosecutor as soon as possible.

A group of fourteen progressive City Council members have signed a letter asking Governor Andrew Cuomo to take the investigation out of the hands of local district attorneys any time police-related killings occur.

Members of the City Council’s Progressive Caucus today joined with minority activist groups to demand Gov. Andrew Cuomo appoint special prosecutors in police killings—and to trash the governor’s State of the State proposal to create an independent monitor to review grand jury proceedings when a cop is found not guilty of a crime.

The New York City police commissioner, William J. Bratton, on Tuesday delivered a broad commentary on the country’s troubled history of race relations and the role of the police in fostering old divisions that still sow distrust in minority communities.

More details are beginning to emerge about the officer indicted in the shooting death of 28 year-old Akai Gurley in the stairwell of a Brooklyn housing project last November. Seema Iyer, Monifa Bandele, Cherrell Brown and Julian Zelizer discuss.